Fall 2024
UNDERGRADUATE COURSES - FALL 2024
AFRICAN AMERICAN AND AFRICAN DIASPORA STUDIES: AFAS UN1001-001
Course Title: Introduction to African American Studies
Instructor: Nyle Fort
Day/Time: TR 4:10pm - 5:25pm
Prerequisites: Students need to register for a section of AFAS UN1010, the required discussion section for this course.
From the arrival of enslaved Africans to the recent election of President Barack Obama, black people have been central to the story of the United States, and the Americas, more broadly. African Americans have been both contributors to, and victims of, this “New World” democratic experiment. To capture the complexities of this ongoing saga, this course offers an inter-disciplinary exploration of the development of African-American cultural and political life in the U.S. but also in relationship to the different African diasporic outposts of the Atlantic world.
The course will be organized both chronologically and thematically, moving from the “middle passage” to the present so-called “post-racial” moment—drawing on a range of classical texts, primary sources, and more recent secondary literature—to grapple with key questions, concerns, and problems (i.e. agency, resistance, culture, etc.) that have preoccupied scholars of African-American history, culture, and politics. Students will be introduced to a range of disciplinary methods and theoretical approaches (spanning the humanities and social sciences), while also attending to the critical tension between intellectual work and everyday life, which are central to the formation of African-American Studies as an academic field.
This course will engage specific social formations (i.e. migration, urbanization, globalization, etc.), significant cultural/political developments (i.e. uplift ideologies, nationalism, feminism, Pan-Africanism, religion/spirituality, etc.), and hallmark moments/movements (i.e. Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights movement, etc.). By the end of the semester, students will be expected to possess a working knowledge of major themes/figures/traditions, alongside a range of cultural/political practices and institutional arrangements, in African-American Studies.
AFRICAN AMERICAN AND AFRICAN DIASPORA STUDIES: UN 3936-001
Course Title: Major Debates - The Long Black 1980’s
Instructor: Jafari Allen
Day/Time: Wed 2:10pm - 4:00pm
This course will explore major debates in Black Studies from the vantage of 'the long 1980s'. While questions of Black ‘community’ inclusion and naming, representation, political strategy, and resistance, for example, have long historic genealogies; the long 1980s is distinguished by an explosion of discourses transmitted through popular and scholarly media. This course will survey a number of these— with specific attention to how a newly re-emergent ‘African American Studies’ contributed to public intellectual life, thus re-shaping itself as a feature of US Academe. Faithful to the themes of the debates of the era, we will pay particular attention to the significance of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality in Black politics, culture(s), and society— tracing how Black scholars’, critics’, and artists’ (re)conceptions of ‘articulation,’ ‘intersectionality,’ ‘Afrocentrism,’’ hegemony,’ and ‘white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy," e.g., sought to explain and contextualize contemporary popular culture, and political realities like the effects of deindustrialization and dawning of neo-liberalism, “police brutality,” AIDS, Apartheid, crack, Reagan/Thatcher, and public policies launched to address the so-called “crisis of the Black family,” for example. Beginning with a brief look at genealogies of African American and African Diaspora Studies, we will take up several of its most enduring major debates through a survey of popular and scholarly literature, social theory, film, music, ethnography, and historiography. The course will require primary independent and group research, listening, and screenings.
AFRICAN AMERICAN AND AFRICAN DIASPORA STUDIES: UN 3943-001
Course Title: Senior Pro Seminar
Instructor: Farah J. Griffin
Day/Time: Tue 2:10pm - 4:00pm
AFAM Majors Only
This course is a seminar for seniors to either conduct a capstone project or to begin the research process for a Senior Thesis, which will be written in the Spring semester. This interdisciplinary course provides the necessary structure needed to complete either goal. This will be an interactive class in which students are required to participate and actively engage in each meeting. The classroom is designed to be a safe, respectful space in which the feedback given and received will be constructive and will assist students in working through the issues they may be experiencing with writing. Whether students will transition to academic or nonacademic spheres, this course is designed to help students cultivate effective writing and research skills and to develop oral presentation skills.
TOPICS IN THE BLACK EXPERIENCE: UN3930-001
Course Title: Image Matters: Writing with photographs from the African Diaspora
Day/Time: Thur 2:10pm - 4:00pm
Instructor: Edwidge Danticat
"How should we understand the relationship between the family, the photograph, and the African diaspora?" asks the scholar Tina M. Campt in her 2012 book Image Matters. In this course, we will examine how some African American and African diaspora writers have used photographs or collaborated with photographers in writing poetry, fiction, essays, and criticism, expanding our understanding of their families, communities, and broader cultural and historical issues.
Students will "write with photographs" throughout the course and in midterm and final projects. They will develop skills in critically reading and interpreting written texts and visual imagery while exploring the intersection of literature and photography as a combined medium for storytelling and cultural expression. Students will enhance their writing skills by integrating photographs, their own and others', into their creative and analytical writing.
TOPICS IN THE BLACK EXPERIENCE: UN3930-002
Course Title: Manifest Spirit: African Art and Spirituality
Day/Time: Thur 12:10pm - 2:00pm
Instructor: Rachel Grace Newman
This course is an exploration of West African spiritual and accompanying visual systems. Students will be asked to consider how African multisensory expressions of spirituality force us to reconsider what “art” means in an African context, particularly how African art is interwoven into society. Combining lectures and reading-based discussions, the class will determine what it means to distinguish between an inanimate “art object” or an animated spirit entity that has been made manifest in matter – wood, shell, metal, et cetera. The class does not adopt a survey approach. Rather, it hones in on specific phenomena in different ethnic groups: the BaKongo Dikenga (or Yowa Cross), the syncretism of Vodun in Benin and its neighboring countries, Orisha and ancestral veneration through the Egungun masquerade among the Yoruba, the mass theft of ancestral entities by the British Army in the Edo Kingdom, and masquerade and sacred architecture of the Dogon. The class will delve into the complexities of altar creation and maintenance, rites of passage, secret societies and knowledge systems, and masquerade. Given West Africa’s long history of contact with the rest of the world, we will also examine the syncretism of outside influences within Africa. The course will also ask how entities crafted for spiritual purposes are exhibited in museums and how they are antithetical to the life of works intended to be activated by the communities that created them. Further, it will examine the history of the formation of significant collections of African art, particularly those in former colonial centers, the current market for the sale of visual entities originally crafted for a sacred purpose, and issues of repatriation. Throughout the semester, we will look at installations of African art in New York. The class will culminate in student presentations, followed by a final research paper. The goal of the paper and the presentation is for students to do a deep dive into a topic of their choosing (to be approved by myself).
GRADUATE COURSES - FALL 2024
African American and African Diaspora Studies: GU4990-001
Course Title: Research Writing
Day/Time: Wed 2:10pm - 4:00pm
Instructor: Vivaldi Jean-Marie
The Black experience has been studied intensively by social scientists and humanists, but also explored by writers and artists. This class examines in detail the concepts and categories that have been employed to document and analyze the lives of Black peoples across the diaspora. The course surveys different traditions of research, writing, and other forms of critical examination and creative exploration. Its objective is to prepare students for the interdisciplinary field of Black Studies. The class is discussion based with weekly readings and invited guests who will share work and offer insights on their disciplinary methods in Black Studies. The course is open only to graduate and undergraduate majors in African American and African Diaspora Studies. Students will be required to write short, weekly commentaries. Over the course of the seminar students will develop a thesis prospectus, including annotated bibliography, and present the final prospectus to the class. Exceptions may be made for other students at the instructor’s discretion.
African American and African Diaspora Studies: GR6100-001
Course Title: African American Pro Seminar
Day/Time: Tue. 4:10pm - 6:00pm
Instructor: Megan French
This course introduces students to central questions and debates in the fields of African American Studies, and it explores the various interdisciplinary efforts to address them. The seminar is designed to provide an interdisciplinary foundation and familiarize students with a number of methodological approaches. Toward this end we will have a number of class visitors/guest lecturers drawn from members of IRAAS's Core and Affiliated Faculty.
TOPICS IN THE BLACK EXPERIENCE: AFASGU4080-001
Course Title: Colonial Visual Systems: Rendering a “New World”
Day/Time: Tue 12:10pm - 2:00pm
Instructor: Rachel Grace Newman
This course will examine the visual organizational systems used by Europeans during their colonization of the Americas, specifically the Caribbean. These systems were used in several ways: first, to classify what Europeans had never encountered through botanical and zoological illustration, then, as tools to assert control over groups of people and land through mapping practices and ethnographic illustrations. As such, the course will examine the broad history of colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, and plantation visuality and surveillance beginning in the early fifteenth century and ending with contemporary questions around decolonization and methodology. The course will study how these visual systems were marshaled to create narratives that persist today, including the construction of racial hierarchies, the modern-day surveillance state, and land as kin to be protected or property to be exploited. The course emphasizes developing research skills using primary source materials to compose a convincing, inquisitive piece of writing. The main requirement will be a final 15-20 page paper and a student presentation so that each student can share their research with the class. Over the semester, we will work on developing this paper together; the goal is for students to have a paper they can use for conference presentations or even rework for publication. At the end of the course, the student will be versed in the colonial history of the Caribbean and Latin America and how visual systems developed there have functioned to construct systems of power and control.
TOPICS IN THE BLACK EXPERIENCE: AFASGU4080-002
Course Title: Ethnography in Black Communities
Day/Time: Thur 2:10pm - 4:00pm
Instructor: Anthony Johnson
This course will introduce students to the methods and practices of ethnographers on black life in urban settings. The goal of the course is to introduce students to ethnography as a methodology to understand and critically examine Black urban populations. Through readings of anthropological literature and other disciplinary texts, we will pay particular attention to the historical, cultural, social, economic, and political contexts that shape urban experiences for Black communities throughout the globe. We examine topics including food justice, post-colonial economies, environmental justice, and abolition to name a few of the topics critically engaged by scholars of black urban communities and the social forces that affect every day lived experiences.
The course will cover a range of geographic locations including U.S. cities like Baltimore, New Orleans, and Philadelphia, while also examining critical discussions of black urban life in Brazil, and Jamaica. We will closely examine how authors consider social formations in urban contexts, and the intersections of race, class, and gender. We will also explore how authors critique social forces that shape and inform the daily lives of black urban populations. The goal of the course is to better understand how ethnography can be used to critique and add depth to commonly held understandings of black cultural practices or representations.
TOPICS IN THE BLACK EXPERIENCE: AFASGU4080-003
Course Title: Black Geographies: A Place for Black Study
Day/Time: Wed 12:10pm - 2:00pm
Instructor: Brandi Summers
This graduate seminar explores the inextricable connection between blackness and geographic inquiry by exploring the intersections of Black Studies and Geography. Considering Katherine McKittrick’s claim that Black geographies are “‘the terrain of political struggle itself’ or where the imperative of a perspective of struggle takes place,” we will situate the spatial relations of blackness by placing Black people at the core of spatial production and examine the mechanisms by which this takes place. In this course we ask: what are the limitations and possibilities of traditional geographies and how does Black study attend to these boundaries? How does Black geographic thought produce wider material and conceptual space for geographic knowledge? How does Black Studies account for and understand Black spatial condition, experience, and imaginaries?
TOPICS IN THE BLACK EXPERIENCE: AFASGU4080-004
Course Title: "Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint Revisited"
Day/Time: Thur 4:10pm - 6:00pm
Instructor: Samiya Bashir
Founded by the late poet and activist June Jordan in 1991, Poetry for the People (P4P) teach empowerment through the artistic expression of writing and reading poetry. P4P focuses on the reading, writing, and teaching of poetry. By connecting arts, activism, and academics, the program also engages in bridging the gap between the university and the larger community, working with schools, community organizations, and activist projects in the neighborhoods within and around the university. Jordan’s model has a set of guidelines for the crafting of poetry which emphasize maximum impact with minimum words. African American and American Poets of Color are centered, alongside contemporary African poets.
Together we will explore the power of writing and witness how much it may help people grow both together and independently. In practical terms, this will translate to rigorous reading, writing exercises, and in-depth class discussion designed to hone the critical skills and strategies necessary to the craft. We will read, listen to, and analyze poetry written by nationally recognized authors in an attempt to find a common critical language that we will use while discussing student work. Students will write poetry, both in and out of class, and will workshop that poetry with their peers. Students will engage in writing exercises designed to help them develop and strengthen more intentional writing skills.
African American and African Diaspora Studies: GR699-001
Course Title: Thesis Research Graduate
Instructor: Brandi Summers
AFAM MA Students ONLY